Tragically Sexist Barbie Book Sends Message Girls Can Only Code With Guys' Help

While Barbie has been making some strides in terms of representing real power girls, having just launched a brand new career-driven doll, a well-intentioned Barbie book originally meant to encourage girls to get into computer science from 2010 has hit the web, and it's unexpectedly sexist message has a lot of people outraged.

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In the book, called Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer, Barbie decides she is going to code her own computer game about a robotic puppy. But when Barbie's friend Skipper raves about how cute Barbie's robotic puppies are and asks to play the game, Barbie laughs, saying, "I'll need Steven's and Brian's help to turn it into a real game!" Because a girl coding a game by herself is funny, apparently.

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Not only does Barbie need the guys' help to code, but she needs them to save the day, too, after she infects her computer with a virus, and then infects Skipper's, too. She even ignores her female teacher's advice on how to get rid of the virus and turns to Steven and Brian to fix it for her—and code her game while they're at it. *sigh*

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Random House

The Twitterverse understandably flipped out over the sexist depiction of a female computer engineer, with users sending messages expressing their disappointment to Mattel. Someone even created a website where you can rewrite the book the way it should have been!

In response to all the complaints, Mattel pulled the book from Amazon, and the vice president of Barbie's Global Brand Marketing, Lori Pantel, told TIME that the book was published in 2010 and the company has since overhauled their Barbie books.

It's a bummer that a book that portrays Barbie as an incompetent computer programmer ever existed, but it's good to see that girls everywhere raised their voices to get it pulled from Amazon.